Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.clos
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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: Do something. Now.
Message-ID: <1996Dec23.121729.24061@wavehh.hanse.de>
Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de
Organization: Private site
References: <3059948144828413@naggum.no> <851066309snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk> <GJR.96Dec20105752@hplgr2.hpl.hp.com> <851174617snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk> <joswig-ya023180002112962143090001@news.lavielle.com> <851272035snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 96 12:17:29 GMT
Lines: 185
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:24378 comp.lang.clos:4105

cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) writes:

>In article <joswig-ya023180002112962143090001@news.lavielle.com>
>           joswig@lavielle.com "Rainer Joswig" writes:

>That's exactly what I mentioned it! I've seen posts from
>people concerned for the future of CLX. Is that worth flaming
>me for?

CLX is just an Xlib mapping for Lisp. There havn't been work on it for
a long time and that makes some people upset who needs more advanced
Xlib features.

But for me (and - obviously most other), the existing interface is
sufficient for what I'm going to do (I don't care for advanced Xlib
features, I need something I can use to display basic things and get
some feedback).

>> Applications you can really *buy*. In Lisp. Isn't
>> this interesting?

>All it tells me is that people still use CL. See above.
>Lisp isn't dead yet. I don't just mean CL. Perhaps your
>definition of Lisp is limited to CL, but I doubt that.
>Anyway, mine certainly isn't. While programmers use a
>language, there should be room for change.

There are points I don't like about Common Lisp. Therefore, I looked
into Scheme and SML and thought about waiting for Dylan.

I decided that Common Lisp is good enough and that the range of
availiable tools (cl-http, Screamer, Garnet, maybe someday CLIM,
books, other people pushing Lisp etc) is the greatest resource I can
think of.

Look at all those Java tools. I happen to like the language, but
almost all libraries I can get source for are pure junk (I like having
source, I need to learn from it). Not to speak of JVMs exploding under
the slightest data load.

Dylan's greatest drawback will of course be the lack of such resources
for my needs and without a free environment I can't expect free source
to show up.

>> Guys, I like to see you not waste your time with useless
>> nonsense discussion. We can use Common Lisp (and Scheme)
>> today and we have a *lot* to do.

>Yep, but not enough. That's why I'm using C++. I'm not
>asking for much, just a few things like OCX etc. Threading
>would be really handy.

Lack of threads in free CLs (except ECOLisp) is what I miss
most. Problem at hand: The problem is too tough for me to solve. 

What's OCX?

>> - CL-HTTP needs your hacking. We have ideas for the
>>   entire next three centuries. Ask John Mallery about advice
>>   (join www-cl@ai.mit.edu).

>CL-HTTP does indeed need some hacking.

>While it well be possible to do it all in CL-HTTP, it would
>require a lot of work to do it as well as commercial web servers
>_and_ all the addon tools for them. I know they cost money,
>but that's not a problem.

>In fact, it may be necessary for CL-HTTP to do all that a
>commercial web server can do _and more_, just to get noticed.
>The marketing factor should not be ignored, unless you don't
>have to convince anyone that CL-HTTP is capable.

>A lot of work to do.

Could you give some examples what feature you are referring to? About
two third of all Web servers in the world are drive by apache. Apache
is just serving files, calling CGIs and pushing contents of Web pages
through a C api.

Server-side Java: Servlets look pretty nice, but it's not that cl-http
cannot install user code to generate HTML pages.

SLL: Who is actually using it? There's a commercial Apache version
with SLL, but as we see, most people can live without it.

What most people driving Web site today want:
- Pure file serving with a few gimmicks. Apache is just right

What most people drinving Web servers one-two years from now:
- Easiest setup to open your whole windows box to the net. MS will
  take care of servers doing what they (the serverm not the user)
  thinks is a nice gimmmick.

What people want who wants to do killer Web applications:
- Cleanest way to handle user input from server-side
  application. Parts of cl-http take care of this.
- Cleanest way of presenting outout to the user without overloading
  network. Parts of cl-http take care of this, as well as CLIM-related
  projects.
- A lot of Web features that work around weaknesses in the stateless
  HTTP protocol needs a clean programmer interface. Have you seen
  cl-http's (http:with-cookie-values ...)? Have you see what it takes
  to do the same from CGI-based C programs? If so, you could imagine
  what I spent the last year with.

>> - We like to start a Free CLIM effort. Vendors were not
>>   very helpful to advance CLIM. Martin Cracauer (http://www.cons.org/)
>>   has started a mailing list, which I think will get some discussion
>>   started in the new year. Join now!

>Ah, yes. CLX is not enough? This is the concern that I refered
>to above.

I'm afraid I have to pick up Rainer's previous note and ask you to
have a brief look over CLX and CLIM. 

To make it short: Yes, CLX is not enough to be counted as the only GUI
tool. Xlib isn't, either.

>I was hoping to have a reasonable discussion about what may
>(or may not) be done with Lisp to make it more "competitive"
>(in the sense that implementations might be able to compete
>with C++ compilers), but I guess that's not possible.

While Rainer is quite rough sometimes, he's one who actually pushes
Lisp forward (much more than me).

I'll try to say it as polite as I can, but you, Cyber (I'm sure that's
not your real name, but anyway) are someone you does acutal damage to
the Lisp community. 

While you try to point out weaknesses of Lisp (that's a good thing, of
course), you suffer from commenting about things you don't know enough
about. For some years, if I remember right, this newsgroup sees
postings of yours that draw a wrong picture of the usefulness of some
of Lisp features. The other way round, of also named advantages of
Lisp that were pointless.

Remember, this is a public forum. Many people are looking for a new
language to use. In the past, those hint by C++, now those who took
the new freedom introduced by Java (its now possible to tell
management there *are* other languages).

If someone gets interested in Lisp, he/she usually monitors this
newsgroup for a while or even browsing message of a few days
once. When you post nonsense about a weakness and someone corrects
you, the new reader will have no idea who of you is correct. Those
people will count the point discussed as Lisp feature that is even
argued over in the Lisp community.

When you post wrong information about positive features, you might
lead people to try that out, recognize it was wrong and count it as
"the Lisp community either has no idea what is useful" or "All those
praised Lisp advantages turn out unuseable for other people".

Nowadays, it is even more important to keep the newsgroup's contents
in line. There's a great potential of hackers who actually can
contribute to free software. Today, many people are facing problem
that cry for a more dynamic language than C++, mostly feeding the
Web. When i look over the maintainer list of the current CMUCL effort,
I see a lot of people joining from usenet or public mailing lists.

Every newsgroup has people like your, but next to FreeBSD's Jesus
Monroe Jr. (he havn't been using his real name either), you are quite
outstanding how long you maintain to post about things you don't know
about. Sad. How much time did you spend to post to comp.lang.lisp this
week? I'm sure you could also had a quick look over the CLX manual and
into Ralf Moeller's excellent CLIM introdution on the Web. I'd say
that would have been a lot more useful for all of us.

I'll stop and resume reading cl-http's documentation, as I speak of
it. 

Martin
--
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
